Rosalía is currently on her world tour for her critically acclaimed album, MOTOMAMI. During her July 9 show in Sevilla, Spain, the Catalonian singer announced she’ll be releasing a new song soon called “DESPECHA” and performed it for the fans in attendance. A clip from it later went viral on Twitter, but the reaction to the song wasn’t exactly positive.
Produced by Chris Jedi — who has worked with Cardi B, Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and more — Rosalía was recorded performing the song to a crowd for the first time. In the short video, fans caught a glimpse of what’s to come — a merengue de calle-tinged song with her signature vocals. The clip was seen over 154,000 times and the tweet has over 3,000 likes. In the quote tweets, however, people were upset that her song had merengue influences and accused her of cultural appropriation — something she’s been accused of since her wildly popular song, “Con Altura.”
Being that Rosalía is from Spain, she’s not considered Latine but gets recognized in conversations and accolades as such. She uses these different types of Latine styles of music — bachata, merengue, etc. — and infuses her songs with them to the dismay of Latine people.
“She needs to stop,” one Twitter user wrote in a quote tweet. Someone else said, “Block>Report for spam>Report again from another account for impersonating our culture>Delete.” The accusations of cultural appropriation flooded the comments section as well as the quote tweets.
There were some people who were excited about the new song and can’t wait for it to come out. “We all need it!” a Twitter user replied to the video saying. “I’m afraid this will be one of my most streamed songs ever… necesito este bop inmediatamente,” someone else wrote in the comments.
Rosalía has yet to announce when the song is actually coming out, but she said it will be soon.